I occasionally host couchsurfers at my apartment in East Harlem. On my couchsurfing profile, I have a standing offer to help any of my guests who happen to be actors with their audition monologues. Last week, a surfer took me up on the offer. We worked on his Malvolio a bit, plus two different contemporary monologues. Then we compared notes on where to get monologues from. Of course you can get them from plays, but you can also easily get them from books as well. Poems, magazines, whatever.
But then he suggested one to me I hadn't thought of: Craigslist. Specifically, the "missed connections" and "rants and raves" sections.
So I spent a little time looking a few over. A lot of the posts are unusable, but the missed connections... well, I'm going to share a few of my favorites from both sections with you. These are things that I can just about picture on stage.
I think if you did a little bit of editing (completely normal for audition monologues, even Shakespearean ones are usually cut) a good actor could use any of these for an audition. Especially the last one, which I'm personally going to use if I can ever get it down to just two minutes.
---
You did, in fact, take the A train to get to Harlem (the quickest way). You had curly blonde hair pulled back and yeah yeah yeah listen: I'm not saying I'm in love with you or anything. I'm just saying that looking at your face made my heart stop.
I've been in this city long enough that this doesn't happen to me anymore (thankfully). Pretty faces come and go. For the most part.
Just before your stop, you managed to collect everyone's attention. And then you took it all with you when you left.
Well, at least I'm still thinking about you. That explains why I'm here. Two hours later.
So... I hope that guy is dating your friend. Or dating some other gal, I don't know, I don't want to say "I hope he's SINGLE," that's just mean.
Which means I shouldn't say I hope you're single, either. So I won't.
But, you know, I have to say something. Even if it's just: have a great night. I hope I run into you again.
---
For the past few years, I've often stopped in the food stores on Brighton Beach Avenue to take out some of the hot and cold ready made salad bar foods. I just can't do that anymore. I wonder, what are people thinking about when they approach a salad bar and start to take their food. In one place in Brighton Beach yesterday, I saw an old man stick his fingers in the mashed potatoes to taste them, a older woman, touched the item labeled fish cutlets, what might that exactly be, and then a younger guy took food, put it in his container, then sealed it, then opened the container and dumped the food back in the salad bar. A little girl about ten years old, was sticking her finger in the trays set up with fruit cocktail.
A few blocks down, I went into the bakery -. This place smells great, but the way the food is arranged-- it's serve yourself, there are no wax paper to grab items, with, serving utensils provided are dirty looking the bakery goods that need to be kept cold are but here again, this is an open type unit where people just stick there fingers in and out of the goods. This gets the customers touching every piece of cake and cookie on display for purchase. I don't know how the Bd. of Health lets this take place.
But the best happened in the third store today. the one a door or two down from the bakery, here in this store, i stood back and watched all the pigs at the salad bar and finally, I saw a young Russian guy, look at everyone touching and playing with the food, and HE got disgusted. At his own disgusting pig people.
---
I've heard that looks matter quite a bit to men when they're choosing a woman to settle down with in a legitimate relationship. Apparently, serious men seek out women whom they feel they can "show off," as a symbol of their success.
So, why do all my exes end up with busted chicks? I'm not the best looking woman and I'd never claim to be. I also know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder... However, these women are blatantly less attractive than me, and I dare say most. They also tend to be less educated and are in a lower socio-economic bracket than I am.
I'm BETTER. I don't want to say that, but I am; comparatively speaking, that is. I feel like a bitch saying this. I'm not a bitch. If they were ending up with highly accomplished, beautiful women, I'd understand. But when I see them dating homely hoodrats, I truly fail to understand what gives!
Oh, and I'm great in bed. I do everything, OK.
----
If you are reading this, you know. Bikram Yoga Lower East Side, Tuesday night 6pm class. We were standing next to each other in the first row... started innocently enough, but eventually turned into the hottest fire burning hell of a class I've ever taken. Most of the people layed down but we persevered. You: late 20s, cute black rimmed glasses that you kept on for most of the class until they, presumably, fogged up beyond use. I'm the athletic red head in the green sports bra who said "DAMN" as soon as the last savasana started. You grabbed me after class as I was passing by, to exchange sympathetic "good job"'s and spoke about when we usually come to class.
I wish I would have asked for your name or gave you my card! Hopefully it's not too late.. let's meet up and talk about yoga, and not yoga.
---
I've never ever done this before, but now I am.
I feel like a complete loser but I had to do this (my roommates are making fun of me as I type this even though this was their suggestion.)
You had short blonde hair and you were so wonderful that I couldn't even keep eye contact while talking to you because I was so taken aback.
This is ridiculous.
Coffee, tea, "drinks," food, anything that is considered normal I would gladly take you to; though don't expect the conversation to be all that interesting because I probably won't be able to do anything except compliment you.
Why didn't I get your name or number? I blame it on you though, you made me a bumbling fool. (They're still making fun of me, when I came home I actually did the whole door closing behind me, lean back on it and sigh heavily "thing.")
Though I'm sure you will never see this thanks anyways, you were quite lovely in every sense of the word.
What insignia was on your headphones?
---
This was on Friday at the Met. I remember you from the elevator when we were going from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor. You were the guy wearing the red sweater... I held the door open for you and you smiled at me. I saw you again in the Cubism section. I was standing in front of The Actor painting by Picasso. You were looking at Matisse's "View of Collioure and the Sea". You were standing there for a while, sketching in a brown notebook. I was about to approach you, but froze up and ended up tripping and falling into the painting leaving a small tear.
I think you left before the security got there.
If you read about this in the news the next day, I'm the girl from the elevator.
--
Hi,
Last night you stole two of my cameras outside Angelica's Kitchen on 2nd Avenue and 12th street.
I figured you'd try to sell them here, unless thieves are photo enthusiasts. You might make an honest living taking photos of shit you stole, hell that might make a great Gallery Title, "The Shit I Stole: Reflections on Urban Living in The 21st Century". You might even get into Francesca Woodman-style self-portraits that you could take with my stolen cameras, make them real artistic, with a shallow depth of field, that's what you can afford (or I guess, can't afford because you are a damn thief) when you have a 50mm prime lens attached to the Canon A-1 (that's the black one that you stole) that opens up to a 1.4. Fuck yeah, I'm giving you photography lessons, so at least you can shoot right, I mean what the hell were you gonna do with two cameras that no one wants anyway-- don't try to sell it to some Midwestern tourists in Times Square, man, don't sell it in Times Square in general. It's a 35mm film camera, who the hell wants to pay for processing now that you can take a picture with your cell phone? Why didn't you steal my cell phone instead? The camera on it is a piece of shit, and you would be making much more money off that, and I hate my phone so you'd be doing me a favor.
In your grubby hands you have a Canon AE-1-- that's the silver one with a zoom lens on it. Also you can really impress some chicks with the blue-jeans denim strap that comes with it, because you will look like Peter Parker in the sense that you will resemble a nerdy high school photographer from the late 70s. You should really do yourself a favor and get some polyester pants. You will not impress anyone else, however, because it's just about the most basic student camera Canon's ever made.
Finally, there are some miscellaneous shit in there:
a Firewire 800 Cable - this will not be much of use to you
Camera Logs - like you'd even understand them
a half-read secondhand copy of Albert Camus' The Plague - Listen, you dick. I was 110 pages into that and until I buy another secondhand copy of that book I'll never find out what happened to Dr. Rieux and the rest of the people in Oran.I dunno, man, maybe you're in the middle of an existential crisis, that's why you're stealing shit, right? to assert your existence or whatever. well, you should read that book. you might get a kick out of it. just don't use it for kindling for your garbage-can fire under the 59th street bridge.
Three rolls of shot film - This is what I'm pissed off about the most. I took some pictures over the weekend with those cameras and they're still loaded with film. I hope you didn't open them in daylight like an idiot, not knowing that the little cardboard square that said "Ektachrome 64" under the viewfinder meant that it's LOADED, you fuck. There are shot rolls of Portra 800, 50D, and 1600 in there (film speeds-- the higher the number, the more sensitive the film, you jackass) that are pretty important to me, and would have absolutely no use to you. If you could do me a favor and drop those off at Forum Photo on Waverly and Washington Square East-- ask for George (I will not ask him to punch you in the mouth), or just drop it off under the name "Jerk McAllister". You can even shoot the rest of the rolls in those cameras and I will pay for matte prints with a white border for you, so you can show your thief buddies all your photographic skills. I can already picture the great canted angles and center-framing you're cooking up while looking for someone to take those cameras off you so you can get your next heroin fix.
Of course, I'm perfectly aware that you might have just been a Good Samaritan and returned it to a police station or you're looking for clues around the the case to determine who it might belong to. If this is the case, then you can disregard all that mean shit and I hope you email me about getting it back. I'll even throw you a couple of bucks and buy you lunch. But I'm also perfectly aware that if this was the case it would be raining gumdrops from marshmallow clouds and we'd all be singing showtunes. So, more likely than not, you stole it, and now you're trying to sell it on craigslist.
So fuck you.
No comments:
Post a Comment